Florian Alexander Schmidt / Royal College of Art

PROJECT

Monster Soup – Making the Invisible Visible

CLIENT

–

Monster Soup – Making the Invisible Visible

The text is about the analogies between the caricature “Monster Soup” by William Heath, published in 1828 and a printed version of the ‘State-Trojan’ in a German newspaper in 2011. Though seemingly two different subjects, both publications reveal a serious threat of their times by making something invisible visible.

JURY COMMENTS

I commend this piece for its insights and its argument. It’s bringing these two things in the world together—the William Heath engraving from 1828 and the State Trojan code published in a German newspaper in 2011—in ways that speak of the author’s visual awareness, his analytical abilities, and his nose for a good story, and imaginative approach to writing. – Alice Twemlow

Monster Soup – Making the Invisible Visible

1. The Nutshell: In plain language, tell us what your piece of writing is about, what it aims to achieve, and how it is written.

My text is about the analogies between the caricature “Monster Soup” by William Heath, published in 1828 and a printed version of the ‘State-Trojan’ in a German newspaper in 2011. Though seemingly two different subjects, both publications reveal a serious threat of their times by making something invisible visible. While the caricaturist translates its subject matter, microorganisms in the drinking water, into a readable and humorous form, the newspaper puts emphasis on a new form of illiteracy, by printing the plain code of the malware. Through this juxtaposition I am showing the importance of the open source movement for politics.

2. The Brief: Summarize the commission you were given (or gave yourself). What was the context for this piece of writing, and what was the challenge posed to you? Where and when was it published? What is the approximate circulation of this publication? Who is the audience?

The essay is the result of a very open brief given by Rick Poynor in a short workshop during the Research Method Course at RCA. At the Wellcome Collection, Poynor showed us some of his favourite exhibits and then asked us two pick one to write about for our selves. The text was published recently (April 2012) on the website “Unmaking Things : a Design History Studio”, which is a peer reviewed site of the design history students at the RCA. On that site, the audience is quite academic and narrow but my goal is to reach a wider circulation.

3. The Intent: What point of view did you bring to the piece? What did you hope would happen as a result of your piece?

On one level, being a graphic designer myself, I wanted to point to the visual rhetorics of making something invisible visible but illegible (having in mind David Carson printing a text in Zapf Dingbats). That is part of the reason why I also included epilogue about the printed human genome. But the visual layer was only the stumbling block that enabled me to talk about the political issue behind it, which is questioning our trust in authorities faced with invisible threats in our everyday commodities and our quasi-magical relationship with technology. My main intention was to create awareness for that.

I was quite absorbed with the news about the exposure of the German State-Trojan weeks before I got the brief to write something about the Wellcome Collection. So, without knowing it, I was doing my research beforehand. I was then prowling around in the Wellcome Collection for quite a while before I found the caricature and everything fell into place. Then I did some more research about William Heath (surprisingly little information out there), the State-Trojan, the Human Genome Project and bio-hacking; but the most important part of the process was to think about different forms of revealing and hiding, of transparency and obscurity and of displaying without understanding and the magical superstition connected to that. The Wellcome Collection proved to be a rich source for this and hopefully this will also shine through in the text.

5. The Value: How does your piece of writing earn its keep in the world?

That is a big question and I don’t want to fall into the trap of overestimating the impact of my little essay. Having said that, I do believe that it has its value in allowing to see an exhibition of old artefacts through the lens of a contemporary issue. It can also inspire designers and editors to think about the meaning of printing something illegible to make a point. The restless ghost of MacLuhan, guess… But my main goal is to create awareness for the political dimension of code. Over the last years, it has become clear that we are about to loose fundamental civil rights like freedom of speech and privacy through our technology. Our devices are giving us away. And it is not (‘just’) criminals and big corporations – it’s our democratic governments that put us under general suspicion and use criminal methods, preemptively, allegedly to prevent crime. The recent forays in Germany, the US and the UK show that their goal of total control over all channels of communications has practically been achieved. The only question is, if it is going be legalised after the fact or continues to happen under the surface, like with the state-trojan. My text wants to strengthen institutions like the Chaos Computer Club who belong the tiny minority of people who not only have an opposition to what is happening on that frontier, but who also have the skills and the guts to make the invisible visible. We need more of that.